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"A Rose for Emily" (Text Key 243)

By far one of Faulkner's most anthologized stories, "A Rose for Emily" was also his first story to be published in a national magazine, Forum, April 1930. The composition details of this story are somewhat unclear. Although Joseph Blotner assumes that Faulkner started writing it as early as 1927, the letter on which this assumption is based does not provide any explicit evidence. Whatever the case may be, the story went from manuscript to typescript to published text somewhere between 1927 and 1930. Throughout this period, Faulkner changed the story substantially by making it both shorter and more enigmatic. More precisely, the final published version leaves out an extended conversation between Emily and Tobe regarding the dead Homer Barron.

After 1930, Faulkner revised the story slightly for publication in the short story collection These 13 (1931). This revised version has become one of Faulkner's most frequently re-published texts, appearing, for example, in A Rose for Emily and Other Stories (1945), The Portable Faulkner (1946), Collected Stories of William Faulkner (1950), The Faulkner Reader (1954), A Rose for Emily (1956), and Selected Short Stories of William Faulkner (1962). It is also the version adhered to here.

How to cite this resource:Burgers, Johannes H., and Elizabeth Cornell. "Faulkner's 'A Rose for Emily.'" Added to the project: 2012. Digital Yoknapatawpha, University of Virginia, http://faulkner.iath.virginia.edu